When he was once started, when he had lost himself in his subject, she knew that he could speak both fluently and convincingly; but she realized that he simply couldn't talk unless he had something to say.

In order to put him at his ease again, she remarked with pleasant firmness: "Do you know there is something about you that reminds me of my Cousin Jimmy.

It gives me almost a cousinly feeling for you." She had the air of expecting him to be interested, but he met it with the rather vague interrogation: "Cousin Jimmy ?" "The cousin who always came to our help when we were in trouble.

We used to say that if the bread didn't rise, mother sent for Cousin Jimmy." Though he laughed readily enough, she could see that his attention was still wandering.

"I never had a cousin," he returned after a pause, "or a relation of any sort, for that matter." His voice was curiously distant, and she was conscious of a slight shock, as if she had run against one of the hard places in his character.